SIUYA

Dude - I actually read it as you are agreeing with the original post.... and that you are pretty spot on when you say "Technical Analyst's are Fooled by Randomness more than they care to believe" This however does not negate that as a tool TA is not valid. No tool is fool proof, a cure all, a one stop shop for ensuring success in any business or venture or profession......and for those that claim it is, or those that claim that something is useless they are equally misguided IMHO. This is one of those discussions whereby an extreme view of one side or the other makes no sense, but if it works for you to some degree (even if you are fooled by randomness) then thats probably not a bad thing.

even if you are a believer.....i thought this was funny, and could possibly related to many trading claims. How Does Homeopathy Work?

thanks....I have always blamed the accountants for the worlds woes! Trickery and deceit, both f the customers, the government and analysts .....its my conspiracy theory and i am sticking with it -- plus i know from seeing some very ordinary fund accounting and auditing how useless half these things are.

I think its a similar thought process, and as johnW says - each might find the same solution from a different path.....'find your own way' right zdo. while i would be inclined to agree with you zdo - you dont want to restrict yourself, the issue for many is the elephant running wild in the first place - little steps maybe. Its more about behavioural tricks not to reduce the elephant but to have it do what the rider wants while still exercising all the benefits (of normal behavior). This should not be a task and a chore or exhausting for either rider or elephant, and so the discipline would not really be needed very often as you say, but should rarely be called on as the elephant is doing what it does naturally - its the small tweaks that can best help this......for me it might be best described as working out how to do more of what you do best, and less of what you do poorly.....because this is the most natural for you. thanks.

from my basic programming.... you need a simple 'compare' within the loop eg; MaxX=0 MaxNValue=0 for N=A to B begin X=formula.... 'Compare values and assign..... if X>MaxX then 'this is only triggered at the start and if X>MaxX MaxX=X MaxNValue=N end if next N 'loop returns

sorry - you are correct, thanks for pointing this out....., but in the context he is talking about it is a great way to describe it without worrying about any reference to Eastern philosophies..... mind you if that works then thats fine. More as a visual for how to imagine your rational side might struggle controlling your emotional side. You dont need to have any reference to Eastern philosophies to be able to picture it - at least i dont . .....and I think bringing in these often confuses, or alienates some as 'more mumbo jumbo' Maybe its just me and i react well to visuals. (plus introducing Eastern ideas with Zdos ramblings woould also confuse even more ) Regardless - I referenced more the book Switch - How to change things when change is hard - Chip Heath and Dan Heath, rather than the original, which I do want read.....as Trading is maybe not so much about happiness - or is it? (at least MM is thinking sushi and not elephant burgers)

ahhhh....this is the point that is missed and why i asked. It has ZERO to do with eastern philosophy at all. Thats why i quoted the books. It is more about a description about how the left brain right brain/emotional and rational sides of the brain work - or the latest theories, and this is a great visual to imagine why it is difficult to changes habits, bend emotions, and control one self..... In brief - the rider is the rational side. It is trying to control the elephant the emotional side. Basically - this is going to be hard to do as the elephant is far bigger, has different motivations to the rider and the rider is quickly exhausted (discipline (and self control) is rapidly exhausted as shown through studies) (hence the idea Zdo is getting at (I think) - that if you need to revert back to discipline all the time you are stuffed - as it will exhaust you)..... the analogy works as the rider is small the elephant large - but with the right incentives the rider can direct the elephant quite easily.....blah blah blah.... nothing to do with eastern philosophies - but the book is worth a read, and for me - as I am a simple fellow - it struck a light on for what a lot of others may be (maybe I am wrong here) often talk about in similar veins. Its more about incentives, behaviour changes and core beliefs not about discipline. The book gives some examples of how quickly results can be acheived with simple changes that have nothing to do with discipline, punishments or incentives even.

it is often said that trading is a business.......but this does not mean that either good business people will succeed at it, or that it is any way a traditional business. it has nothing to do with traditional businesses of sales, marketing, logistics, inventory, employees, health and safety, etc; etc..... IMHO it means you should approach it as you would a business - have a plan, work out how you will make money, how you will fund accounts, deal with drawdowns and such.....how will you organise your day, pay your taxes, expand profits..... but trading is not only for business people, i might even be that successful business people dont make good traders - the skills that helped in one area may be harmful in other areas.....who knows. Why not just say, 'trading is only for loners/introverts/autistic savants/agressive passive personalities"

i never get seperate, pyhscology or weather right either. ............. Interesting that no one else has any lessons they have learnt from their failures......or that they care to share them, or maybe its just they dont care.....

Zdo...my post #48 talked about two books i read... Switch - How to change things when change is hard - Chip Heath and Dan Heath they referenced and use the elephant and rider idea from The Happiness Hypothesis - Jonathan Haidt .....in it he talks about the 'elephant (emotions) and the rider (rational thought)', .....but I did not read that.....one for the future. A question(s) for you.....have you read these or seen the 'rider (rational) elephant (emotional)' description referred to? if so - is this kinda of what you are talking about? if not - I think this is kinda what you are talking about.... If this is kinda what you are talking about - I think I finally understand about 90% of you posts now. If not then I am still lost but interested

probably because it sounds like a rather large project....or its not being well described. You would be best to write up what you are trying to achieve using an excel spreadsheet as en example on just a few stocks to show exactly what you are trying to get at. This way its clear to those who might wish to help. If its relatively simple then some suggestion might be made....if its complex then you might need more professional help and they will require such a write up to bes tunderstand what you are trying to get at. mainly as this still is hard to follow...... "I want to project my past good trades, on a set of rules. " What rules? "When I look at the historical charts of the stocks I played, I see a significant change in the pattern of the price and volume. I need a set of rules that can tell me if a future change is significant. " ????? do you want someone else to provide rules? "To do so I check my past trades and check how significant a change on the charts really was. That is why I need a function that automatically calculates the sample size (# of tick data) ." /.....it might just be a language barrier, but for me an example is required from you to help people.....who might then be able to help you.

i think any analogy can be used if it clicks with you Vince, or with others. Plus I read the boxing one slightly differently with Ali.....he applied a strategy to suit the situation. He had done the homework, the hard work and then did not chop and change md way. Then he stuck with it, and basically thats why i love that quote.... "Is that all you got, George?" to which Foreman thought "Yep...that's about it." After that, Ali began to dominate Foreman." Now, letting the market beat you to a pulp first might not be advisable, plus markets dont have ten rounds, bells, and endings......, but for some that is what it takes.

adding to FX thunder... I had support down at the 128.05 level and when it enters here I looked for a break through that and then any first bounce. This occurred 1.2790. (This is a bottom picking exercise and something i dont recommend be done without some confidence or experience.....however its also a good way to look at ways of taking profits if already short and have been hanging on.) Stop initially at the lows, take profit on this will be a partial take profit at approx 1.2815, and or 1.2835. The congestion just above from where it broke 90 mins previous. Plus I will move the stop to BE if there is a pullback that makes a higher low in the 1.2782-90 region, and then rallies. This is also a reasonable level to be abe to enter if it does so, however, due to the type of selloff, this might be one of those rare times that a V bottom occurs and hence i have gone early - you could also build a position and partially enter. (watch very closely as it requires some finesse - or just leave as is) Otherwise, I am much the same - thinking that rallies should now be sold again, bias is to the downside and so long and short amounts will be adjusted. (its been a while for this thread - thanks Fx for the reminder) EDIT - stoppped out - quick as a flash - thats about par for course for every trade i have posted in this thread. But now I will stick largely with the Fxthunder analysis of selling decent rallies) http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=32618&stc=1&d=1352103033

rope a dope...from Wikipedia....Rumble in the jungle a great story.... "After several rounds of this, he began to tire. His face became increasingly damaged by hard, fast jabs and crosses by Ali. The effects were visible as Foreman was staggered by an Ali combination at the start of the fourth round and again several times near the end of the fifth, after Foreman had seemed to dominate that round. Although he kept throwing punches and coming forward, after the fifth round Foreman looked increasingly worn out. Ali continued to taunt him by saying "They told me you could punch, George!" and "They told me you could punch as hard as Joe Louis." According to Foreman, near the end of the fight, Foreman slammed Ali with a thundering body blow, and Ali whispered to him "Is that all you got, George?" to which Foreman thought "Yep...that's about it." After that, Ali began to dominate Foreman." I loved that last part, and if anything you should learn - context and strategy - learning when to apply different strategies.......

THE AUSTRALIAN APPROACH A young Aussie lad moved to London and went to Harrods looking for a job. The manager asked 'Do you have any sales experience?' The young man answered 'Yeah, I was a salesman back home in Dubbo.' The manager liked the Aussie so he gave him the job. His first day was challenging and busy, but he got through it. After the store was locked up, the manager came down and asked, 'OK, so how many sales did you make today?' The Aussie said 'One!' The manager groaned and continued, 'Just one? Our sales people average 20 or 30 sales a day. How much was the sale for?' '£124,237.64p.' The manager choked and exclaimed £124,237.64!! What the hell did you sell him?' 'Well, first I sold him a small fish hook, then a medium fish hook and then I sold him a new fishing rod.' 'Then I asked him where he was going fishing and he said down at the coast, so I told him he would need a boat, so we went down to the boat department and I sold him that twin-engine Power Cat.' 'Then he said he didn't think his Honda Civic would pull it, so I took him down to car sales and I sold him the 4 x4 The manager, incredulous, said, 'You mean to tell me...a guy came in here to buy a fish hook and you sold him a boat and a 4x4?' 'No, no, no... he came in here to buy a box of tampons for his lady friend and I said... 'Well, since your weekend's buggered, you might as well go fishing.'

just to balance it...... what i love about buying options is when i win those few times i win big.

thats cleared it up for me! I am vibrating in the apartment as my clothes are spinning mercilessly in the washing machine......if i shake enough the random forces of nature might make me depress the buy button.....or maybe the sell button....... if there is madness in the method but it works go for it.... and yes Patucca, maybe its time to bring participation in a meaningless meandering thread to a close....thanks for the reminder.

now you have me thinking Zdo - I was wondering about the word precept (poor vocabulary on behalf of the Oztralliiann education).......so i checked out wikipedia and was wondering how it applies here given their definition? Precept - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia but i guess if you take it simply as a "a rule or principle for action" ..................... Personally stress can come from bad trading.....no need to complicate it any further than that.. There are plenty of f...d up people who can trade well and thrive on the stress (or excitement) and dont need meditation, medication or exercise....for them trading is a stress relief from the real world. (I took 6 months off when i was 30 and used to wake up in the middle of the night thinking about my golf swing. I knew then it was time to go back to work because if i was going to stress about something it might as well be worth it to me.....thats my kind of stress relief - a feeling of productivity - does that make me f...d up? .)

first you had better work out what you want....it seems a bit confusing.... do you want a function, or data (as a sample size)...... "So what I now need is to have a tool to automaticly use the right sample size. Haven't found the function in Excel for that. When I have the right sample size, I want to have Excel tell me when a change in the stock is significant. (Change in volume and stock price). " .............. I need to know if that move is significant enough." OR do you want to analyse past trades? "Because I want to test out a couple of statistical tests, I want to check my own historical trading data" The best way to get frustrated asking for computer programming help is to not know what you want to do and be very clear about it.

a politician in the making..... http://i.imgur.com/XaiUx.gif

No, i am saying some will view them as areas of support to be purchased, some will view them as a level that might be broken. Some will wait until momentum starts, some will try to buy before, some will job/scalp at the levels, others will be adding to positions.... it has nothing to do with levels....it has to do with actions. REAL actions. There are plenty of examples of images (not charts) that can be viewed as different things even though the image does not change. The rest of the discussion about real or inventions is just BS. Re the staggered charts - IF the data is taken from the exchange then yes, everyone will have the same. If data providers build up charts from tick data and start times are not aligned and time stamps not used then of course it can be different. (I get your point - but if everyone has the same aligned clocks then its highly unlikely to occur) A perfect example of this can be seen in range bars, these are very dependant on when someone starts the chart.....and are not related to a fixed point in time. but again the whole discussion is probably a waste of time as irrelevant.

best ask them as from memory most of us who are responding didnt think so. you can have 10 people look at the same chart and get ten different opinions, ten different styles and approaches, ten different possibilities of hitting the button in terms of time, and ten different possible exits.....so its largely irrelevant what people see. (even if you stagger the chart) Its more important on what they do and then what the market does (which ever comes first is also partially irrelevant (???)) close of bars is great for working with a computer intraday. It froms a great consistent base from which to make realsitic consistent assumptions - ie; when this occurs do this at this time. Otherwise so long as each trader remains consistent to the best fit for what ever system they are using that also ties in with the market as it works then that is probably more important. (I use range bars which dont fall subject to large bars whereby the move is missed on a X minute bar, but also has other issues in that sometimes you miss trades if automating, or get some good slippage) With the staggered bars in minutes (or as range bars), one might get a signal, another might not - they will probably even itself out over the long term, and it would be more important to worry about the other factors......in other words - its something that is probably not worth worrying too much about intraday.

I would assume if given the same starting point, accurate clocks and such then yes, you would think the charts would be the same. Otherwise you will have different (or staggered) time frames. Re any other definition/application of what a staggered time frame is then i have no idea..... unless it has something more to do with the idea of looking at multiple time frames....ie; as an example 5min, 30min, 60min bars..... I would assume this would be referred to as multiple time frames, so probably best to ignore this. Bluehorseshoe was the first to mention it, and I think he points out the issues there. Unless of course you are trying to flog a dead horse (excuse the pun)

Ok.....if it helps.....I have heaps, and these are all personal and maybe only applicable to me....it could make for some interesting reading as you are right, its often harder to work out the lessons from failures, rather than the glories of success.....especially when trying to pinpoint the lesson. Personal tidbits and lessons from failures or poor processes (turning points from 20 years of trading) I used to get pissed off that I would do 100 trades in a day and make money but feel that I should have made more money. The guys I traded with said I should just be happy with making it, but it fell on deaf ears.....Lesson - this made me realise that I was more interested in getting the process right, doing the smart trades, and this will make the money. This saved me a lot of pain and problems that others did not get. I waited weeks for a trade to develop one time, (when I was a market maker in equity options), I built a long position, and was ready to go all in on it, and had told my trading mentor/friend/business partner this is it, the trade was on.....late in the afternoon I was asked to quote a favour for a broking friend to sell them a large quantity of calls in the stock for a client. After telling them i was not interested, they begged and pleaded and I finally sold them to them at what was considered a good price for me. Sure enough the next day the stock opened higher, I had sold my position and never chased it. Lesson - dont exercise great patience, anticipation and foresight and then throw it away at the first sign of a profit. I went to lunch once with a large short term equity index position on with no stop, got drunk and never returned. The market took a dive and gapped lower the next day, wiping out three months trading profit.....Lesson - its ok to go to lunch and get drunk, but either do it with a stop or no position. You cant stop living your life and spending all the time at the machine, but have in place provisions to allow for this. I have gone through a few small accounts while testing trading styles and ideas (These are small percentages of the overall book). I like to separate them out for clarity. The higher turnover ones generally blew up, not from losing on the trades but from paying the brokerage.....Lesson, overtrading will kill you even if you are right, and you dont have some edge on spread or really low costs (and I mean really low) I used to live and breathe the markets and was lucky I learnt my skills in the equity markets that closed each day. When one night I woke up and looked at the alarm clock and in a panic thought 'OMG is that the price" - I thought it was funny until I soon hit a patch of making money and then loosing it quickly doing stupid things. I had lost perspective. I knew a breather was required.....Lesson, listen to the other things in your life, otherwise the trading will suffer. I have had periods of loosing before and the first thing to assess is not the market, but if you are doing the things that normally make you money. Usually I find when loosing I have changed something. It might be that I became slack in recording trades, or doing the prep, and having a view, or I got focused elsewhere, or I started reversing orders......Lesson. The markets dont change too much, but you probably have, check there first. ''''''''''''''''''''''' Disclaimer - for your book and your rights to use this how ever you like....I could be making this all up and am some lonely 14 year old kid sitting in reform school.

so do you want stories of individual trades that did not work, or you did not participate in, or that were stuffed up for some reason.....such as your single AAPL trade? (everyone has plenty of these, even Mr Buffet) or do you want stories and an analysis of why people blew up accounts and stopped trading? (these are probably rarer apart from the normal - i could not get it to work for me) ..................... do you want stories such as....trading caused me to loose my money, loose my mind and hate my mother.....I almost went postal and grabbed the gun to blame the broker until I found crack and now I am a successful drug dealer. or I once was in private equity, rode the leverage boom and thought i knew it all. Until i blew up my account trying to trade, and i figured it was easiest just using other peoples money and charging fees. or I had $10,000 to trade, and spent $6,000 on seminars, mentors, and courses, and then was disappointed to find that i was seriously undercapitalised with only $4000 left with which to try and make my millions.